Hoshin Kanri is a tool for systematic planning, execution and tracking of milestones against plans and constant course corrections. Seems like what Software Project Management desperately needs! He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.-- Leonardo da Vinci Hoshin Kanri, loosely translated means "the way the compass shows". This conveys the closest interpretation, "Course Corrections". Hoshin Kanri is religiously practiced in Japanese Manufacturing as well as other areas like services to a smaller extent. It is a systematic method of aligning organizational goals with longer term plans and breaking the longer term plans down to medium term and short term ones. What is even more impressive is the way metrics are defined and tracked religiously. Meticulous attention is paid to "what" gets tracked and whether what gets tracked is contributing to the advancement of short term, medium term and longer term plans. This is where Hoshin Kanri principles could be modified, improved and applied to software development efforts. Traditional software development project management places a lot of emphasis on writing everything down and making processes repeatable. However the attention paid to process steps detracts from the goal of software development which is to enable users to complete tasks. Customer requirements change often, people communicate badly, software project teams misunderstand communications all the time. Hoshin Kanri's constant realignment of current activities with overall goals and course corrections are the same principles that drive approaches such as Extreme Programming and Rapid Software Development. However they can all be absorbed and assimilated into an overall framework of software project management that implements the idea of constant course corrections. Course corrections in Requirements Gathering are accommodated naturally in the above methods with customer feedback constantly solicited, obtained and channeled back to the development teams. Course corrections in Software Design are also accommodated by rapid prototyping methods that produce prototype for customer feedback early on so that big mistakes can be avoided earlier on in the development cycle. Course corrections in software project management are very helpful in realizing planning mistakes in software development as early as possible in the development cycle and making adjustments like dropping some features, using a third-party product to shorten development cycles or in adding additional resources or farming out part of the development. Adding software development resources rarely ever produces the desired results but can be helpful at times. Hoshin Kanri provides a very powerful framework to consolidate and integrate many rapid response methodologies and use them in a systematic way. Any time new processes are added to the software development cycle, they add make-work that add marginal value to the customer. However Hoshin Kanri seems to be providing a flexible, actual framework of goals, plans and tracking. It can be very useful if modified appropriately and applied to software project management. Even with ISO, SEI/CMM and assorted certifications on the wall, many software projects run into difficulty because there was a processn and it was followed diligently but the assumptions about requirements may have been wrong. You have just delivered on time, on budget what the customer said, not what they meant! Hoshin Kanri may have some techniques that fix these problems earlier on in the cycle!